Collapse :; how societies choose to fail or succeed - Taschenbuch

Cornell Univ Pr. Hardcover. New. Hardcover. 240 pages. Conceived in the aftermath of the American Civil War and the grief that swept France over the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Statue of Liberty has been a potent symbol of the nations highest ideals since it was unveiled in 1886. Dramatically situated on Bedloes Island (now Liberty Island) in the harbor of New York City, the statue has served as a reminder for generations of immigrants of Americas long tradition as an asylum for the poor and the persecuted. Although it is among the most famous sculptures in the world, the story of its creation is little known. In Enlightening the World, Yasmin Sabina Khan provides a fascinating new account of the design of the statue and the lives of the people who created it, along with the tumultuous events in France and the United States that influenced them. Khans narrative begins on the battlefields of Gettysburg, where Lincoln framed the Civil War as a conflict testing whether a nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . . . can long endure. People around the world agreed with Lincoln that this question and the fate of the Union itself affected the whole family of man. Inspired by the Unions victory and stunned by Lincolns death, Edouard-Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, a legal scholar and noted proponent of friendship between his native France and the United States, conceived of a monument to liberty and the exemplary form of government established by the young nation. For Laboulaye and all of France, the statue would be called La Liberte Eclairant le Monde Liberty Enlightening the World. Following the statues twenty-year journey from concept to construction, Khan reveals in brilliant detail the intersecting lives that led to the realization of Laboulayes dream: the Marquis de Lafayette; Alexis de Tocqueville; the sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, whose commitment to liberty and self-government was heightened by his experience of the Franco-Prussian War; the architect Richard Morris Hunt, the first American to study architecture at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris; and the engineer Gustave Eiffel, who pushed the limits for large-scale metal construction. Also here are the contributions of such figures as Senators Charles Sumner and Carl Schurz, the artist John La Farge, the poet Emma Lazarus, and the publisher Joseph Pulitzer. While exploring the creation of the statue, Khan points to possible sources several previously unexamined for the design. She links the statues crown of rays with Benjamin Franklins image of the rising sun and makes a clear connection between the broken chain under Lady Libertys foot and the abolition of slavery. Through the rich story of this remarkable national monument, Enlightening the World celebrates both a work of human accomplishment and the vitality of liberty. This item ships from multiple locations. Your book may arrive from Roseburg,OR, La Vergne,TN., Cornell Univ Pr, Clean and Unmarked Text: John Weatherhill Inc 1979 / 1983 Reprint, 1979. Paperback : soft cover edition in very good or better condition, some slight wear to edges, as normal for age of book. Excellent read. A good book to enjoy and keep on hand. Or would make a great gift for the fan / reader in your life.. ~~~Gift Quality Copy~~~. Illus. by Fully Illustrated. Travel, Culture, History., John Weatherhill Inc 1979 / 1983 Reprint, 1979, London: Virgin Books, 2005. (xviii) 359 pp. Black boards lettered in silver on the spine. Light wear at the corners of the dustjacket; small ink mark on the upper edge of the text block; price intact; no interior markings. This collection contains: Introduction; The Original Beats: New York 1944 - 1953: Jack Kerouac: Home at Christmas; Jazz of the Beat Generation; Belief and Technique for Modern Prose; Essentials of Spontaneous Prose; Railroad Earth - excerpt; Old Angel Midnight - excerpt. William Burroughs: Twilight's Last Gleamings (with Kells Elvins); Junky: Definitive Edition - excerpt; Roosevelt AFter Inauguration; Internation Zone; The Naked Lunch - excerpt. Allen Ginsberg: Pull My Daisy (with Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady); Howl; Footnote to Howl; A Supermarket in California; Sunflower Sutra; America; Many Loves; To Aunt Rose; Kaddish. Herbert Huncke: Elsie John; Bill Burroughs Parts One and Two. Cari Solomon: Sex at 20 in America; Report from the Asylum. Neal Cassady: One Night in the Summer of 1945; Letter to Jack Kerouac March 1947; Letter to Jack Kerouac July 1949; Adventures in Auto-Eroticism; Leaving L.A. by Train at Night. John Clellon Holmes: Go: Part One, Chapter 3. Gregory Corso: Italian Extravaganza; The Last Gangster; The Mad Yak; For Miles; Last Night I Drove a Car; Hair; Marriage; Bomb. Peter Orlovsky: First Poem; Secone Poem; Creedmore State Mental Hospital Night Shift Look and Mop; Signature Change. The San Francisco Scene 1954 - 1957: Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Loud Prayer; Underwear; Sometime During Eternity; They Were Putting Up the Statue; Constantly Risking Absurdity; Autobiography; Dog; The World Is a Beautiful Place. Gary Snyder: Riprap; For a Far Out Friend; Myths and Texts: 17 - The Text. Philip Whalen: Sourdough Mountain Lookout; Further Notice. Lew Welch: Chicago Poem; In Answer to a Question from P.W.; I Saw Myself; Wobbly Rock 1; Taxi Suite - excerpt; I Know a Man's Supposed to Have His Hair Cut Short. Michael McClure: From the Introduction to Ghost Tantras; Ghost Tantra 39; Ghost Tantra 51; A Garland; Mad Sonnet. John Wieners: Act #2; A Poem for the Old Man; A Poem for Cock Suckers; A Poem for Vipers; A Poem for Record Players. Bob Kaufman: Abomunist Manifesto; Notes Dis- and Re- Garding Abomunism; Further Notes; Abomunus Craxioms; Still Further Notes Dis- and Re- Garding Abomunism; As Usual; War Memoir: Jazz, Don't Listen to it At Your Own Risk; Jazz Chick; Crootey Songo; Waiting. Lenore Kandel: First They Slaughtered the Angels. The Second Wave: New York 1958 - 1960: Diane DiPrima: Thirteen Nightmares. LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka: In Memory of Radio; For Hettie; Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note; Black Dada Nihilismus. Frank O'Hara: A Tep Away from Them; The Day Lady Died; Poem; Personal Poem; Why I Am Not a Painter. Alexander Trocchi: Cain's Book - excerpt. Ted Joans: The Truth; Uh Huh; Whiteyes on Black Thighs; They Forgot to Fast; Open Minded; Duke's Advice; Watermelon; My Bag; Natural; Jazz is My Religion; No More; The Nice Colored Man. Ray Bremser: Backyards and Deviations. Jack Micheline: Let's Sing a Song; River of Red Wine; Jenny Lee; Night City; South Street Pier; and Poet for the Streets, followed by Biographical Notes on Writers.. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo., Virgin Books, 2005, New York: Wecome Enterprise, Inc., 1986. Blue cloth binding with title in bright gilt. NEAR MINT illus. dustjacket. Blue end papers, previous owner presentation inscription. FIRST EDITION (stated) 160pp., all color photographs, some with text, many others are full page. For four glorious day and nights New York City hosted thr most spectacular party ever to take place. The festivities were to honor the 100th birthdat of the Statue of Liberty. A beautiful NEAR MINT copy... First Edition. Cloth. Near Mint/Near Mint. Folio - over 12" - 15" tall., Wecome Enterprise, Inc., 1986, Chicago: Time, Inc., 1952. Magazine. Very Good-. Articles include: Korean War cartoons; Dwight D. Eisenhower wins presidency; Radiant Elizabeth presides over her first Parliament; Submarine Seadog comes to blimps' rescue; Unrehearsed Chaplin comedy -- star falls in Paris; Mexico City is Sinking; Theater: Jean-Louis Barrault on Broadway; Nancy Sewell, "stunt girl" for Beat The Clock game show; Manhattan vs. Clam Chowder -- two recipes; The Phonograph Celebrates its 75th Year; Manokin Presbyterian Church celebrates 280th anniversary; California adds 5th wheel to car to facilitate parking; Gadgets Help Handicapped Keep House; Movies: Plymouth Adventure -- uses special effects, Dawn Addams as Priscilla; Radio Astronomy -- reveals invisible stars and new facts about the sun; Mary Callery's stretched statues; The Sixth Grade -- Classful of children take happily to "progressive" teaching methods -- Miss Warner's 6th grade class at Saddle Rock school in Great Neck, Long Island; Sir Charles Belgrave makes ancient Bahrain a model for a new Western policy in Middle East; Strapless Fashions; Life Goes on a Falcon Hunt off the Maryland Coast. Ads: Rita Hayworth for Lustre-Creme Shampoo; Camels ad on back cover featuring John Wayne, Dorothy Kirsten, Rise Stevens, Linda Darnell, Ruth Hussey, Richard Calrson. Edgewear, rubbing to covers., Time, Inc., 1952, New York: Viking, 2005. First edition, fourth printing. Hardcover. Extremely light edgewear to DJ protected in archival mylar sleeve, extremely little wear to spine head & foot, barely rubbed corners, else near fine(-) in near fine(+) DJ.. Large octavo in grey DJ; xi, 575 p, [24] p of b&w plates & maps ; 25 cm. "In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the prehistoric Polynesian culture on Easter Island to the formerly flourishing Native American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya, the doomed medieval Viking colony on Greenland, and finally to the modern world, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of catastrophe, spelling out what happens when we squander our resources, when we ignore the signals our environment gives us, and when we reproduce too fast or cut down too many trees. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, unstable trade partners, and pressure from enemies were all factors in the demise of the doomed societies, but other societies found solutions to those same problems and persisted."--Jacket. || Contents: Prologue : a tale of two farms -- Two farms -- Collapses, past and present -- Vanished Edens? -- A five-point framework -- Businesses and the environment -- The comparative method -- Plan of the book -- pt. 1. Modern Montana -- 1. Under Montana's big sky -- Stan Falkow's story -- Montana and me -- Why begin with Montana? -- Montana's economic history -- Mining -- Forests -- Soil -- Water -- Native and non-native species -- Differing visions -- Attitudes towards regulation -- Rick Laible's story -- Chip Pigman's story -- Tim Huls's story -- John Cook's story -- Montana, model of the world.; pt. 2. Past societies -- 2. Twilight at Easter -- The quarry's mysteries -- Easter's geography and history -- People and food -- Chiefs, clans, and commoners -- Platforms and statues -- Carving, transporting, erecting -- The vanished forest -- Consequences for society -- Europeans and explanations -- Why was Easter fragile? -- Easter as metaphor -- 3. The last people alive : Pitcairn and Henderson Islands -- Pitcairn before the Bounty -- Three dissimilar islands -- Trade -- The movie's ending -- 4. The ancient ones : the Anasazi and their neighbors -- Desert farmers -- Tree rings -- Agricultural strategies -- Chaco's problems and packrats -- Regional integration -- Chaco's decline and end -- Chaco's message -- 5. The Maya collapses -- Mysteries of lost cities -- The Maya environment -- Maya agriculture -- Maya history -- Copán -- Complexities of collapses -- Wars and droughts -- Collapse in the southern lowlands -- The Maya message -- 6. The Viking prelude and fugues -- Experiments in the Atlantic -- The Viking explosion -- Autocatalysis -- Viking agriculture -- Iron -- Viking chiefs -- Viking religion -- Orkneys, Shetlands, Faeroes -- Iceland's environment -- Iceland's history -- Iceland in context -- Vinland -- 7. Norse Greenland's flowering -- Europe's outpost -- Greenland's climate today -- Climate in the past -- Native plants and animals -- Norse settlement -- Farming -- Hunting and fishing -- An integrated economy -- Society -- Trade with Europe -- Self-image -- 8. Norse Greenland's end -- Introduction to the end -- Deforestation -- Soil and turf damage -- The Inuit's predecessors -- Inuit subsistence -- Inuit/Norse relations -- The end -- Ultimate causes of the end -- 9. Opposite paths to success -- Bottom up, top down -- New Guinea highlands -- Tikopia -- Tokugawa problems -- Tokugawa solutions -- Why Japan succeeded -- Other successes.; pt. 3. Modern societies -- 10. Malthus in Africa : Rwanda's genocide -- A dilemma -- Events in Rwanda -- More than ethnic hatred -- Buildup in Kanama -- Explosion in Kanama -- Why it happened -- 11. One island, two peoples, two histories : the Dominican Republic and Haiti -- Differences -- Histories -- Causes of divergence -- Dominican environmental impacts -- Balaguer -- The Dominican environment today -- The future -- 12. China, lurching giant -- China's significance -- Background -- Air, water, soil -- Habitat, species, megaprojects -- Consequences -- Connections -- The future -- 13. "Mining" Australia -- Australia's significance -- Soils -- Water -- Distance -- Early history -- Imported values -- Trade and immigration -- Land degradation -- Other environmental problems -- Signs of hope and change.; pt. 4. Practical lessons -- 14. Why do some societies make disastrous decisions? -- Road map for success -- Failure to anticipate -- Failure to perceive -- Rational bad behavior -- Disastrous values -- Other irrational failures -- Unsuccessful solutions -- Signs of hope -- 15. Big businesses and the environment : different conditions, different outcomes -- Resource extraction -- Two oil fields -- Oil company motives -- Hardrock mining operations -- Mining company motives -- Differences among mining companies -- The logging industry -- Forest Stewardship Council -- The seafood industry -- Businesses and the public -- 16. The world as a polder : what does it all mean to us today? -- Introduction -- The most serious problems -- If we don't solve them ... -- Life in Los Angeles -- One-liner objections -- The past and the present -- Reasons for hope. || Social history; Environmental policy., Viking, 2005

Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity. Because he's addressing such significant issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an ancient,anthropology,cultural,early civilization,earth sciences,environmental policy,environmental science,historical study and educational resources,history,political science Environmental Science, Penguin Group USA Inc.

In his million-copy bestseller "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? As in "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of these societies, but other societies found solutions and persisted. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own societyas apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana. Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, "Collapse" is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide? Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Diamond, Jared, Viking Books

Viking, 2005. xi, 575 pages. 1st printing / edition. Hardcover. Illustrated. Maps, bibliography, notes, index Fine- in a Fine- dustjacket. Bright, tight and clean; no names, marks or tears. Price intact. In protective mylar. ISBN: 0670033375 <em>Companion volume to his Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond probes the causes of some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates as our own governments and corporations are bent on committing ecological suicide.</em&gt, Viking, 2005

Diamond, Jared

Titel:

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

ISBN-Nummer:

0670033375

"I've set myself the modest task of trying to explain the broad pattern of human history, on all the continents, for the last 13,000 years. Why did history take such different evolutionary courses for peoples of different continents? This problem has fascinated me for a long time, but it's now ripe for a new synthesis because of recent advances in many fields seemingly remote from history, including molecular biology, plant and animal genetics and biogeography, archaeology, and linguistics." -Jared Diamond Who has looked on the ancient Maya or classical Mediterranean cities and not wondered why they were abandoned? Or whether they hold a message for us? In this fascinating book, Jared Diamond seeks to understand the fates of past societies that collapsed for ecological reasons, combining the most important policy debate of our generation with the romance and mystery of lost worlds. Citizens of first world societies look around and tend not to see signs of imminent ecological collapse: the supermarkets are full of food; water gushes from our faucets; we live amidst trees and green grass. Actually, though, many past civilizations--with far smaller populations and less potent destructive technologies than those of today--have inadvertently committed ecological suicide: the Polynesian societies on Easter Island and other Pacific islands or the Anasazi civiliation, for example. Ecocide asks why some societies make disastrous decisions, and how can we in the modern world learn better problem solving? Ecocide is an ecological history of human societies that considers why societies in some regions have been more vulnerable than those in other regions, and also compares the trajectories of pastcivilizations with likely trajectories of our own. Why did Greenland fail where Iceland succeeded? What links Rwanda and Australia? What can contemporary Montana learn from the ancient Mayans and modern Chinese?